When did you start collecting wedding dresses?

I've been collecting wedding dresses for about 20 years now. My mother in law was very ill, and Marie Curie and Hospice at Home looked after her. They did a wonderful job so we wanted to thank them properly and we organized a fashion show. Everyone in Caernarfon was involved, and at the time everyone was talking about the millennium coming, and I thought we could end the fashion show with a hundred years of wedding dresses. After that, people would tell me "Paula this dress is gathering dust in the attic, if you can find a use for it- then it's yours!" And that's how my interest started.

You have enough wedding dresses to open a shop! Which one of the dresses is the eldest one in our collection?

The eldest dress I have is the first one I was given. It belonged to my friend Mari Thomas' mother. Mari passed away just before Christmas in '92. As you can see there's no zip or fasten on it, only the way the dress has been cut. Mari knew that I would look after it.

This silver dress doesn't look like a wedding dress does it?

It was used as a wedding dress. All of the beads are glass and that's why it's so heavy. This dress is a bit of an enigma, if you look at it, some parts have been made by hand, others by a machine, I don't know how old it is, 1920s or 30s maybe, I'm not sure.

How has the style of wedding dresses changed over the years?

After the war you couldn't get materials, and then in about 1947 lace started to emerge. This is the first mass produced lace to be sold. Then, you would get something even more refined like the dresses from the late 1950s, early 60s.

Does it bother you that you don't know the history of some of these dresses?

No, not at all. The dress itself can tell you a lot about its history. It can tell you if the wedding day was a sunny day - the hem is usually quite clean. If it was a rainy day then around the bottom of the hem is dirty or you'll see a dirty foot print where someone has trodden on the trail of the dress. Sometime you'll see a cigarette burn on the dress - if you just look at the dress then you can get a lot of its history.

What about dresses from the 1960s, have you got any from that period?

What caught my eye the most about this dress was the fact that a piece of confetti from the day is caught in the petticoat.

If the marriage broke down, or there was some sadness connected to it, does that take away from how special the dress is?

Not for me, no. The wedding day wasn't sad was it, it was a happy day. The couple went to the church or chapel full of hope for the future. Whatever happened after that has nothing to do with the dress itself.

Have you kept your own wedding dress?

No I haven't. I made the mistake of leaving the dress at my mother's house. My mum let my daughter use the dress to play May Queen, so I'm afraid that the dress is long gone. I still have photographs of the dress but I don't think it would fit over my thigh let alone my waist these days - I was so thin back then!

By the 1980s, wedding dresses had changed quite a bit with their big puffy skirts hadn't they?

I think that Dallas had a lot of influence on dresses in those days. To wear dresses full of sequins like this one I think you'd need quite broad shoulders to carry it off. That dress was actually my daughter's wedding dress.

Are you going to continue collecting wedding dresses?

Oh yes, I'll give them a good home here. As my husband says, they get more attention that the children do. If anything was to happen to me I would like to see them all kept together. I'm going to write a little note noting what I know about all of them, and keep them together. There's a lot of happiness when you see them all together.